"Elements of Android Jetpack" Version 0.1 Released

Subscribers now have access to Version 0.1 of Elements of Android Jetpack, in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI/Kindle formats. Just log into your Warescription page to download it, or set up an account and subscribe!

As I noted in yesterday’s Elements of Kotlin release, I am working on books for the second generation of Android app development:

• First-generation techniques revolved around the Android Support Library and were mostly based in Java

• Second-generation techniques center on the Jetpack and AndroidX libraries, with more code written in Kotlin

Elements of Android Jetpack is an introductory book for Android app developers, with Version 0.1 covering up to some basic UI construction (widgets and ConstraintLayout). Over the next several months, I will expand it to cover much of the core pieces of Android app development, as the table of contents illustrates.

Compared with The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, Elements of Android Jetpack:

• Features parallel samples in Java and Kotlin, to help ease the transition to developers new to both Android and Kotlin

• Focuses on the Jetpack components, including relevant bits of the Architecture Components (e.g., ViewModel, LiveData, Room)

• Employs the AndroidX libraries, as opposed to the Android Support Library

• Drops most of the legacy stuff: very little on RelativeLayout, ListView, etc.

(of course, a lot of this is still to be done, as this is merely Version 0.1)

Elements of Android Jetpack is my long-term introductory book on Android app development… and I’ll talk more about what that means for The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development and Android’s Architecture Components on Thursday.

If you are already a subscriber, and you have already worked through the core chapters of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, Elements of Android Jetpack is not for you… yet. Give me a few more months, and there will be a few topics that might be new for you, such as the Navigation library (if it ships in final form).

In addition to the two new books, subscribers got something else yesterday: a new way to read the books. I will talk more about that tomorrow.